Efforts to prevent child deaths in the United States have fallen behind those of other wealthy countries, according to a decades-long study published on Friday. Over the past 50 years, child mortality in the US declined at a rate 8 per cent lower than in 13 other rich nations.
From 1935 to 2023, child deaths in America fell by 89 per cent, compared with 96.6 per cent in the peer countries. The study also revealed that there have been 800,000 preventable child deaths in the US during that period – an increase of 200,000 from a previous analysis in 2018.
Gun violence and self-harm are partly responsible for the disparity, according to research from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Teenage boys aged 15 to 19 account for nearly a third of the preventable deaths.
“We found that the US child mortality disadvantage has persisted for decades and is now increasingly concentrated among older adolescents, particularly males,” said lead author Lauren Koenigsberg. “These findings highlight an urgent need to address preventable causes of death – especially injury, violence and self-harm – where the US continues to lag behind peer nations.”
The US, the wealthiest country in the world, has one of the highest rates of child deaths from gun violence, with 12 children dying each day from shootings, according to the non-profit Sandy Hook Promise. The number of school shootings has increased twelvefold since 1969, and a 2024 report from the American College of Surgeons found that children are now four times more likely to be school shooting victims.
The mental health of American children has also deteriorated, with more reporting loneliness, sadness, trouble sleeping, and fatigue since the early 2000s. Diagnoses of anxiety and depression have increased, and the number of paediatric suicide cases seen in emergency rooms rose by 168 per cent between 2016 and 2021.
